Moonlight Frights: Hidden

Remember how angry I was about Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse? Multiply that anger and annoyance for this week’s Moonlight Frights — Hidden. I’ll admit I got suckered into a good synopsis. A family finds refuge in an abandoned fallout shelter to avoid dangerous prowlers in the night. Ray (Alexander Skarsgård) and his wife, Claire (Andrea Riseborough) have survived for three hundred and one days with their daughter Zoe (Emily Alyn Lind) whom they seek to protect at all costs. Sounds good right? Wrong!

Immediately you feel overwhelmed as this family becomes overbearing — the daughter is constantly worried, the father tries making up for it but the mother — bless her heart! — continues to be the sensible one. While Ray agrees to his daughter having peaches yet again to Claire’s dismay, they discover a rat has infiltrated their cramped space and eaten through their already dwindling rations. While attempting to kill the rat, Ray accidentally sets fire to a table which is quickly extinguished. Zoe notes that the smoke and ash will alert the “breathers” to their underground shelter. While the parental figures go above ground to remove any trace of their presence, Zoe — the child she is — disregards her safety and joins above, alerting Claire and Ray to a figure in the distance. Together they move back into the bunker and hope that the mysterious figure pays them no mind.

This is where things took an expected turn and made me cringe at the plot twist. SPOILER ALERT: The film steps back in time to reveal Kingsville was quarantined by the military for an unknown virus and as the military began bombing the town, our three main characters took shelter in a nearby school. Needless to say, a major death occurs and instigates a brutal assault completely with bad makeup. As I’ve said on my Twitter feed ages ago, Hidden should have stayed hidden in some filmmaker’s closet.